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I was working away on supporting the Daily Outsider‘s Social Media Daily Curation efforts as I ran across this which will serve as my “Food 4 thought” for this week here in my Corner at WordPress. I did release this that the Guardian of London published this morning and all have seen everyone I have tagged–if this does not horrify civil libertarians, not sure what will–as this from @KAL so reflects the profound challenge our World Faces today:

Masih Alinejad is relentless yet controversial figure–yet she’s continued her relentless campaign to raise awareness about the plight of Iranian Women . I commend Professor Turley for his column he published earlier this week as I also underscore what our team captured earlier in the week –while tending to commitments at the Daily Outsider. I couldn’t agree more as he notes, “….We have previously discussed the courage of women in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Muslim nations in fighting sexist rules that prevent them from engaging in basic acts or pursuing their own futures. As I have said before, these women are the most inspiring civil libertarians of our generation — risking jail and beatings […]

2009: he was rejected by both Twitter and Facebook. He tweeted about being rejected from both. 2014: he sold his company WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion. Winning is all about optimism, humility and maintaining a positive attitude.

It has been quite a week in the Political life of the Country. As our team At the Daily Outsider was busy assessing and reflecting, I picked this up from Corey Robin about some of the challenges being faced by the Country right now. Brett Stephens of the New York Times raised quite a possibitliy, though: What if Clinton would have done it?

It is important for the American public to know if the dossier was paid for by another candidate, used in court pleadings, vetted before it was used, vetted after it was used, and whether all relevant facts were shared with the tribunal approving of the FISA application.

As I have said repeatedly, I also remain 100 percent confident in Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The contents of this memo do not – in any way – discredit his investigation.

10:34 AM – 2 Feb 2018

As for Corey Robin, here it is:

You hear a lot of talk on Twitter these days about a constitutional crisis. The thing about previous moments of constitutional crisis in the US is that they were never strictly about institutions and narrowly political questions; they were always about something socially substantive, something larger than the specific issue itself. The crisis provoked by…

As January 2018 drifts away into the history books, I picked this up that is as profound as it gets–some called him the only true revolutionary of the 20th Century–quite a read as I close out January and remain hopeful despite all the profound headwinds in our World.

The Trials of Africa and the Real Dr. King They Want Us to Forget

On January 15, millions of Americans commemorated Martin Luther King’s Day. His famous speech, ‘I Have a Dream’ was repeated numerous times in media outlets as a reminder of the evil of racism, which is being resurrected in a most pronounced way in American society.

But that is only one version of Dr. King that is allowed to be broadcast, at least in polite company. The other, more revolutionary, radical and global King is to remain hidden from view.

Exactly one year before he was assassinated, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King delivered a truly scathing speech that challenged not only the state apparatus by the liberal hierarchy which posed as if they were his allies. It was called: “Beyond Vietnam“.

“We must stop now,” he said, his voice thundering. “I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

Then, he added these words, which sent much alarm among those who sought to isolate anti-war efforts from King’s own struggle:

“I speak of the – for the – poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

Unlike the more famous speech ‘I Have a Dream’ – delivered in the 1963 ‘March on Washington’ – ‘Beyond Vietnam’ pushed past the boundaries of what is acceptable by ‘liberal’ America into whole new territories, where Dr. King’s anti-war and global solidarity values were unapologetically linked to the fight against racism and poverty at home.

On that day, the American civil rights struggle courageously broke free from the confines of American exceptionalism, to join a worldwide movement of struggles against racism, colonialism and war.

Unsurprisingly, Dr. King’s speech angered many members of White communities who were directly or indirectly affiliated with the Washington establishment.

Merely three days after the speech, the New York Times countered in its editorial: “There are no simple answers to the war in Vietnam or to racial justice in this country. Linking these hard-complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion.”

In fact, there was no ‘confusion’, but total and complete clarity and coherence. To be truly meaningful, human rights values cannot be sectionalized and isolated from one another.

Yet, what alarmed the so-called liberals is the intellectual growth and awareness of the civil rights movement at the time, which matured enough to the point of pushing for greater integration among all struggles.

A more vibrant and empowered King, aged only 38 years at the time, seemed to have fully fathomed the link between the oppression of poor, Black Americans at home and the oppression of poor Vietnamese peasants abroad. They were all victims of what he dubbed the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

Right there and then, King had achieved a revolutionary and terrifying idea that might have contributed to his assassination a year later, for many of his allies outside the Black communities began disowning him.

But this passage in particular gave me a pause, as I reflected on the plight of millions of refugees and poor migrants forced to leave their homes in Africa and the Middle East, driven by wars, corruption and extreme want.

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies,” he said.

“On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day, we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.”

The metaphor of the road – to salvation, freedom, safety – was particularly emotive and foretelling.

If Dr. King was alive, he would have certainly placed the refugees as a top priority in his “revolution of values.”

Africa in particular, is being robbed. Tens of billions of dollars are being siphoned out of the continent, while Black men and women are being sold for slavery, in Libya and elsewhere.

Libya was torn apart by the NATO-led war that left the country without a government. The war on Libya channeled massive armaments to neighboring African countries, leading to new wars or resuscitating old conflicts.

According to the United Nations, there are nearly 700,000 African refugees in Libya who hope to reach Europe. The latter, which has fueled the Libya conflict, has taken no responsibility for the crisis.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that 2,550 refugees and migrants died trying to cross to Europe from the Libyan coast in the first 9 months of 2017. One of every 50 persons who embarks on the journey dies on that tragic “Jericho Road.”

They do so while knowing the risk, because staying in Libya or going back home could mean a far worse fate.

While in Libya news reports speak of ‘slave markets’, in Israel, the country’s immigration ministry is offering civilians lucrative jobs to ‘locate, detain and monitor’ African refugees, who are all being pushed outside the country and thrown into other perilous regions.

In the US, the government and media, selectively exploit the legacy of Dr. King, but behave in ways that are completely contrary to the true values of that noble man.

The US military is expanding its operations in Africa faster than in any other part of the world. This means more weapons, more political instability, coups, wars and eventually millions more of poor men, women and children being driven to flee, often to their own demise.

The legacy of Dr. King, as presented in mainstream media, has become about the whitewashing of a racist, militaristic and materialistic system, although King himself has championed the exact opposite.

“Now let us begin,” he concluded in his anti-war speech. “Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”

50 years after his assassination, maybe it is time to truly listen.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story‘ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

Parenting, in the most noblest of ways, is Servant Leadership at its’ very best. We have an obligation to do our best to make sure our Children are better than we are. I am confident that Ken Blanchard and Randy Crowley would also agree.

Please enjoy As I look forward to a vibrant (and yes challenging) February at hand with this snapshot of Ethics along with the introductory thoughts from Randy Crowley….

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Best-selling business author Ken Blanchard believes leadership is an inside-out proposition. “It begins by asking yourself a tough question: ‘Am I here to serve or be served?’” he says. According to Blanchard, the answer to this question will reveal your fundamental approach to leadership. “If you believe leadership is all about you, where you want […]

For me, personally (and the team agreed also to release Professor Turley’s comments as part of it earlier) is this outrageous comment by the US Secretary of Energy. There seems to be no regard whatsoever for science at all–I could not help but wonder how a man served as long as he did as Governor of Texas and a former Presidential Candidate tout this as he did. I could not help but laugh….I appreciate the Outraged Progressive for this…

Originally posted on JONATHAN TURLEY: With much of the world desperately trying to rid itself of fossil fuels to avoid disaster from climate change, the Trump Administration at times seems to be on a different planet. That seems the case at the Davos conference where Energy Secretary Rick Perry proclaimed that the United States is…

Are you here to serve or be served? That question gets to the heart of what motivates you as a leader. Not to oversimplify the issue (although I’m going to!), but there are two basic kinds of leaders: those who are self-serving and those who serve others. The key difference is the mindset of the […]

Whenever the Oscars do the right thing, it is worth noting. @EllieFaras yet again brings his “matter-of-fact” perspective to bear as he reflects upon this fabulous film-A pleasure to share this during my weekly notations here in my “WordPress Corner”. I hope to catch it when it hits Southern California–or when it is available on Amazon Prime:

Ziad Doueiry’s latest movie, “The Insult,” was just announced as one of the five nominees in the Best Foreign Film category for the 2018 Oscars. This marks the first time ever that a Lebanese movie has scored such a nomination – the closest we’d gotten before was when Nadine Labaki’s “Where Do We Go Now” won […]

Please enjoy as the opening paragraph in and of itself is perceptive enough:

At the rate Lebanon’s censorship bureau has been going for the past year, the country might as well have rang in 1918 instead of 2018, because the situation has become unacceptable. The latest victim of a censorship bureau that doesn’t want to upset what’s becoming a form of cultural terrorism in the country is Steven […]